Ethics refers to a set of moral principles that guide our thoughts and actions. It is the study of any situation, which asks how a person ought or ought not to think and behave. There are many situations described in the Bible for which we have clear ethical instruction, for example the list of sexual ethics described in Leviticus 18. Jesus takes ethical behaviour one step further in His sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7, where He shows that ethics is not just about outward behaviour but the attitude of the heart. In doing so, Jesus shows that the Bible gives us ethical principles to govern situations that we do not find explicitly mentioned in the Bible. For example, the sexual ethics discussed in Leviticus 18 and in Matthew 5:27-30 give us principles that we can apply to the situation we face today of viewing pornography on the internet - a sin not possible in Biblical times. This is just one example, but the Bible, as the inspired Word of the eternal God, has ethical instruction, either explicitly or by principles, for every situation a human being will ever face (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
